Washington

Most of us probably view our “golden years” as a time in which we’ll enjoy the fruits of a lifelong labors, and perhaps try to make sense of our lifetimes and our legacies. At the age of 75, though, Victor Kaufmann decided to start a project: the reforesting of a parcel of land he’d recently purchased in Lyle, WA. Unfazed by the notion that he would not witness the full fruition of his project — a healthy, mature forest — Victor set out to plant ten thousand trees on his land.

This Spring, ten years after starting, Victor will put that ten thousandth tree into the ground… and a team of student filmmakers, which includes his granddaughter, will be there to witness and record the event.

On Monday 9/27, Bob Woodward’s latest book Obama’s Wars (Simon & Schuster) will hit bookstores. Woodward (played by Robert Redford in the film ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN) spent 18 months interviewing members of the administration (including President Obama) and poring over internal memos and classified documents to create a behind the scenes account chronicling infighting…

In 1929, Emory Stubblefield opened a salvage yard; in 1944, he moved it to Walla Walla, Washington. Like most junk yards, Stubblefield’s was full of rusting cars, old tires, scrap metal… the typical detritus you’d associate with such a business. Just before Emory’s death at the age of 94 in 2008, he and his children took the business in a new direction: metal and scrap recycling… plus nature habitat.

With all of the talk of green jobs as a source of recovery from the economic doldrums, and climate change as a top priority for legislative action, the timing couldn’t be better for the next edition of the Solar Decathlon. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, this event brings twenty teams of college students from around the world together every two years to compete not in running, jumping, and throwing, but designing, building, and displaying a home that runs completely on solar energy.

You probably don’t use the words “sustainability” and “prison” in the same sentence very often. The housing and feeding of inmates requires huge amounts of water and energy, though, and generates tons of waste. The Sustainable Prisons Project, a partnership between the Washington State Department of Corrections and the Evergreen State College, works to make prisons more efficient… and perhaps even reduce recidivism rates by providing “green collar” training to inmates.